> And you're worried about architectural drawings and building codes?????

The most important reason why building codes exist is for safety. The buildings have been abandoned for some time and are likely in deep disrepair. It seems the city wants to know that if their children go to the science museum, it won't collapse or burn down. This guy is not an architect or engineer, and hasn't even hired one. If the city had building codes but didn't enforce them, and some tragedy happened, they might even be liable legally. They would definitely be liable politically if a big tragedy happened.

That’s the thing! Even if the city had plans of their own, I’d be willing to bet if this guy came in with any sort of backing beyond “well I’ve got my own ideas!” in the way of actual (architectural/engineering) drawings, (time/financial) budgets, etc, he’d have a lot better luck.

Also—like other people have said, if the city are assholes, that sucks, but he’s still going to be fighting a steeper uphill battle on his plans and investments without them behind him—suck it up and learn to work with them or it’s going to be that much harder to not only get started on his current plans, but also his longer term plans of revitalization.

Maybe a great piece of software can be built as a single person working alone, fighting the odds and pissing people off, but I can’t see that approach working for building a town full of people.

Some development boards and city councils definitely have a talent for shooting themselves in the foot, but the man is outright antagonistic to them and has been for years. Before you can build you have to do some legwork in advance and show the development board that your plans are going to be compliant. The board wants to be assured that the plan won't have safety or nuisance issues for the town. In some cases they want to have a guarantee that development will actually happen. In each case, Pine Bluff presents very low bars to development that this guy repeatedly fails to meet.

IMO this is not a case of a nimby board standing in the way of an eccentric trying to innovate. The problem is that he has made himself known to this board as an unserious crank who does not show the board respect for their processes. He has been approved for several different uses at the site and failed to follow through on any of them. He demands special permissions while actively campaigning against their plans. If he could show a good faith effort to help the town build upon what the electeds are doing he might have a fighting chance, but he instead goes around talking shit about them anywhere he can.

Wacky entrepreneur moves in, builds go kart track in abandoned warehouse. No safety precautions are taken whatsoever. Kids come for birthday party. Go kart catches on fire, the warehouse fills with smoke. The kids die.

For a less hypothetical scenario, its not hard to see the parallels with another wacky entrepreneur and a submarine that eschewed traditional safety concerns

> And you're worried about architectural drawings and building codes?????

Building codes, like several other categories of regulations that can at times feel oppressive or arbitrary, tend to be written in the blood of accident victims. See, for example the ghost ship fire in my recent memory of why they are important even if (especially if) you are using an under utilized space

Building codes are not a good example for this one, partly because the ones in America/Canada are clearly less safe than Europe and we don't seem to care, but also because you can just go back and read early 1900s planners talking about them and they will explicitly say "it is our goal to make safety rules stricter for apartment buildings than single family homes so they'll cost more to build because we want to stop black people from moving in."

Can you give an example?

"[D]o everything possible in our laws to encourage the construction of private dwellings and even two- family dwellings, because the two-family house is the next least objectionable type, and penalize so far as we can in our statute, the multiple dwelling of any kind... If we require multiple dwellings to be fireproof, and thus increase the cost of construction; if we require stairs to be fireproofed, even where there are only three families; if we require fire escapes and a host of other things, all dealing with fire protection, we are on safe grounds, because that can be justified as a legitimate exercise of the police power... In our laws let most of the fire provisions relate solely to multiple dwellings, and allow our private houses and two-family houses to be built with no fire protection whatever (NHA Proceedings 1913, 212)."

Another notable quote is Euclid v. Ambler, where SCOTUS legalized the US zoning system and in their opinion said it was good to ban apartment buildings because they were "parasites".

Of course, this is partly about not liking poor people as well as minorities, but if you leave it in place this long it eventually becomes a ban on your own children living in the same state as you.

These things were introduced at the same time as racial convenants (where a developer would construct a neighborhood and require its houses to only ever be sold to white people), and mostly for the same reason; they merely weren't repealed when that one was. For the racial details, see the book "The Color of Law".